Woman claims she was forced to sit under dripping bag during flight

A woman claims she was forced to sit under a leaky overhead locker, describing the ordeal as the “worst experience on a plane” she’s ever had.

A passenger allegedly had to sit under unidentified drippage from an overhead bag for an entire flight after crew refused to move her or the leaky luggage.

Sophie Shaw, 24, from California, was flying on US budget airline Southwest Airlines from San Jose to Santa Ana, when the unexpected happened.

She shared a clip of the unfortunate situation to TikTok, amassing more than 3.5 million views.

“It was the worst experience on a plane I’ve ever had,” she said. “It was like Chinese Water torture.”

The cabin cascade occurred last month while the passenger was en route to see friends in Los Angeles, the New York Post reports.

The San Francisco native, founder of AI business Azuryne, claims she fell asleep shortly after takeoff but woke up after noticing that her “leg and seat were completely soaked”.

Sophie Shaw, from the US, said she had a ‘disgusting unknown liquid’ dripping all over her during a flight. Picture: Kennedy News/Azuryne

Sophie initially thought the lady next to her had spilt water until she looked up and saw “a big drip coming from the ceiling”.

Accompanying footage shows the unidentified droplets plopping down from a gap in the overhead, splattering the passenger’s seat as if she was sitting under a leaky roof during a monsoon.

That’s when she recalled seeing crew attempt to staunch the leakage before takeoff.

“They put some paper towels in the locker, so I guess they’d tried to fix something but they couldn’t,” Sophie said.

Due to her petite stature, the 5-foot-2 tech-spert claims she couldn’t move the bag, so she enlisted a flight attendant’s help.

Sophie said her seat was soaked from the nonstop drops. Picture: Kennedy News/Azuryne

Unfortunately, the flight attendant “wasn’t sympathetic whatsoever” to her undesired shower.

“I pressed the button and told the flight attendant but I thought she looked at me as if I was a nuisance,” Sophie recounted.

“I think it should have been her job to make a bigger deal out of it but she just said the flight was too full and she couldn’t move the luggage.”

As a result, the sopping-wet traveller was forced to sit under the waterfall for the entire one-and-a-half-hour flight.

She said flight attendants tried to stop the drips before the flight but to no avail. Picture: Kennedy News/Azuryne

“I tried to shove myself to one half of the seat to avoid the dripping but my pants were completely soaked and I was basically sitting in a puddle,” she lamented.

To make matters worse, periodic turbulence made the water land in different spots like droplet roulette, so even her shoes got soggy.

Last month, air travel experts ranked the overhead bin as one of the dirtiest spots on the plane because it is “rarely cleaned” and “touched by a lot of people”.

“It was really disgusting to sit through and I was feeling pretty grossed out the entire time so I literally just closed my eyes and listened to music to try and block it out,” Sophie said.

“I think they should have offered to clean it up themselves at the bare minimum and rearranged the luggage to try and stop the drip.”

Upon touching down, Sophie immediately filed a complaint to the help desk, who advised her to send in an online claim.

Southwest responded within eight hours, offering the traveller $US150 (($A224) as compensation, which she deemed stingy given that her flight was $US160 ($A240).

Sophie contacted the budget airline again but they didn’t respond.

The TikTok commentariat was far more sympathetic to Sophie’s “air drop” nightmare, although many thought she could’ve been more assertive about handling it.

“I would’ve said so loudly ‘WHOSE BAG IS THIS !!!!’” one person wrote, while another added, “The scene I would make! Absolutely not. Y’all are either tossing that bag or I am!”

A third chimed in, “Helllllllll nooooooooooooo. I’m non confrontational but I’d be confronting.”

This article originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission